December has arrived, and with it this last Dev-Update for 2024. In the past month I prepared a presentation about the game for some application that took up a lot of time but also led me to nail down some of the vaguer aspects of EQUIRE's planning. One major part that I put a lot of thought into is the setting/story of the game. From the beginning it was clear that EQUIRE wasn’t going to be a story-driven game and would be focused instead on engaging gameplay loops, simulation, and deep mechanics. However, an interesting setting is necessary to create immersion and hook the player.
EQUIRE will put you in a role that might sound familiar to a lot of you. Someone who wants to spend their time with horses, care for them, and ride them, but their life situation doesn’t allow them to live out this dream. Too much space and money would be necessary. This is where a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presents itself. The nature conservation authority is searching for a manager for a new nature reserve on the land of a recently bankrupt oil company. You get the job and strike a deal with the authority. You can build your dream stables and open an estate for guests on part of the land as long as you invest the profits into expanding the reserve. They agree, as the horses will come in handy to traverse the protected areas and fulfill tasks in them, without disturbing nature.
I’m really happy with this setup for the game as it ties together all gameplay aspects and the unlockable biomes. I really wanted something that isn’t the cliché “I inherited the rundown farm of my father and lead it to old glory” and I think this setting can offer a lot of player motivation and gives me inspiration for some interesting, simple tasks that can be performed in the unlocked reserve areas and reward the player. Please let me know what you think of this setting.
On the game production side, I have also made some progress. Firstly, I have introduced weather effects as well as a day and night setup. I plan to randomly generate weather based on the current time of year in the game, but I also want to create the possibility for the player to change it, because riding out in a snowstorm might not be for everyone. To see these effects in action, look out for some upcoming social media posts. Secondly, on the building side of the game, you can now create constructions with multiple floors and connect them with stairs. When building a staircase, the ground of the next floor will create a matching hole, generating the necessary headroom for the player to go up the stairs. When looking at buildings in the top-down architecture mode, you can now change the active level to hide all floors and roofs above. This means you can always go back and add larger structures like walls or rooms to the lower floors of your buildings.
Besides some smaller improvements, like a change for the look of the arena crowd, I also started to add the framework for more interaction between player and horse. I have mostly finished the initial version of a mount and dismount animation, and things like petting on and off the horse, as well as leading the horse from the ground, are things I want to tackle next.
On a larger scale, I have flirted with the thought of working towards a riding demo to get you something to play and collect some feedback on the riding mechanics. This demo would include not much more than a training arena that lets you pick a parkour and a horse to ride it with. No building or management aspects and a release off steam, because I want to publish a more complete demo there later on. I would like to hear your thoughts on the setting I proposed and the idea of this riding demo and wish you all a nice holiday season. You will hear from me again in the new year!